


Fairy Tales & Happy Endings

by lizandletdie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-18 16:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7322332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizandletdie/pseuds/lizandletdie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after leaving his childhood home, Neal has a family and a son of his own and no need to have contact with his estranged father. When he finally returns, he finds a home and a man still wrapped up in his own lies and mythology. Can he ever find out the truth of what his father has been hiding from him? Big Fish AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pirates

“Where’s Mama?” Neal asked, and Ewan Gold didn’t have an answer for him. Milah had vanished in the night, leaving little more than a note with the words _I’m not coming back. Don’t come looking_ scrawled on it in her handwriting. He wasn’t actually too surprised, but so far he’d been able to keep his five-year-old ignorant of the particulars of their marital disharmony. Of course, now he had no choice in the matter.

“Come here,” he said, pulling Neal into his lap. “We need to have a talk about your mother, son.”

“When’s she coming back?” Neal asked. “She said we’d go to the park today.”

“We’ll still go,” Ewan said instantly. “But your mother won’t be with us.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t really know what to say to that simple question. She’d abandoned them to run off with a boyfriend more than likely, but he knew he’d have to wait until tomorrow to file a missing person’s report. It would be even longer before a divorce could be settled, and in the meantime poor Neal was going to be caught in the middle of it all.

“Your mother has gone away to become a pirate,” he blurted out before he could stop himself. “Just like Long John Silver from your book.”

They had been reading a Treasure Island picture book before bed that Neal was absolutely fascinated with. He’d especially liked the idea of pirates and adventures, and truthfully Ewan couldn’t think of anything else to say. She might as well have gone off to become a pirate for all he knew, and maybe it would make things easier.

“Really?” Neal asked breathlessly. “When’s she coming back?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Ewan replied. “But she loves you very much.”

“Is she going to have pieces of eight?”

“I’m sure she will,” he said. “And some good stories for you.”

“Is she gonna miss me?” Neal asked with big, innocent eyes.

“I’m sure she will,” Ewan said. The lie was coming easier now that he’d started it, and he wasn’t sure he liked that about himself. “The most important thing is that she loves you and you love her.”

“I’m gonna miss her,” Neal said softly. “But are you sure she’ll be back?”

Ewan froze for a second, but he nodded at last. This was absolutely going too far, but he couldn’t take it back. He told himself that it would be better this way, and that Neal could learn the truth later when the sting would be less. He wasn’t old enough to know the truth. There would be time later. He could learn the truth _later._

 

* * *

 

“Hey, your mom called,” Emma said as soon as Neal walked through the door.

“Belle's not my mother,” he replied reflexively. They'd been having some variation of this conversation since their marriage. He and his father both seemed to find it easier to relay messages through their wives than directly to each other and he was extremely okay with that.

“Right,” Emma said. “Well, either way she called. Your dad is retiring this year and she invited us to go up with Henry for a few days for the party.”

“No,” he replied instantly. “Absolutely not.”

“Then you can stay home,” she said, swapping the baby to her other hip. “Because I already told her yes.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

“Because they're your parents – sorry, _he's_ your parent,” she said, glancing sidelong at Henry while the baby squirmed to be let down. “And they’re Henry’s grandparents. And you have never given me a solid reason why you hate them.”

“I don't hate _Belle,_ ” he grumbled, taking Henry from his mother. It was hard to hate a person who had basically raised you alone in spite of not actually being a blood relative.

“Then give me a good reason you don't want our son to know the only other family he has and I'll cancel.”

It was a fair request, and Neal knew it bothered her that Henry didn't really have much in the way of extended family. Emma had grown up in the foster system and didn't have a steady home until she was fifteen. They still had contact with her foster mother, but it wasn't really the same dynamic as a grandmother and they both knew it. The problem was that Neal didn't really _have_ a good reason to not want his son around his father. He had plenty of petty reasons, but no single thing he could point to and say _This! This is why he's terrible!_ All he really had was three decades of hurt feelings, and somehow that didn't actually garner him any sympathy from his orphaned wife.

“I'm not going to enjoy it,” he grumbled.

“I didn't enjoy labor,” she replied. “So we can call it even after this.”

“You can't keep using that excuse,” he said. “He's almost two now.”

“Hey, if _you_ want to try to shove a softball through _your_ most intimate areas we can talk about what I can and cannot do,” she said. “Otherwise we are going to spend a week in Maine and I am going to have at least night where somebody else watches my son and it's going to be great.”

“A _week_?” He exclaimed. “You said a few days!”

“A week is a few days,” she said nonchalantly. “It’ll be fine. We’ll swim and have lobster.”

He nodded in resignation and carried Henry into the living room while Emma went to their room, presumably to pack or call Belle to reassure her they were coming or something. He had no idea, and he couldn’t bring himself to care either way.

“You’re on my side, right buddy?” he asked Henry, bouncing the little boy in his arms and eliciting a smile. “That’s what I thought.”

It wasn’t that Neal didn’t love his father, it was just impossible to deal with the man. His father was a liar, plain and simple. He kept secrets, and Neal was just sick of never knowing quite what he could believe. He’d long ago given up on ever getting answers to the things he wanted to know. How could he ever forgive his father if his father wouldn’t change?

 

It had been a long time since Neal had been back to Maine, and the pink house he’d grown up in hadn’t changed much. The house could use a new coat of paint and the flowers were a little overgrown, but for all his father’s obsession with keeping up appearances the building had always had a slightly shabby air to it in Neal’s opinion. They’d bought it cheap as a fixer-upper and he’d spent most of his teen years dodging loose wires and holes in the walls.

His father and Belle had made the house a diy project, apparently thinking it would be fun to do most of the work themselves and not bothering with the fact his father spent most of the year on the road for business. Neal often wondered why they hadn’t bought a smaller, newer house that wouldn’t require quite so much work, but then his father had always been the sort to want to do things himself.

“It’s not too late to go to a hotel,” he said hopefully, but Emma was already unstrapping Henry from his car seat and didn’t seem to have heard him at all, or at least wasn’t willing to acknowledge him.

This was going to be the longest he’d spent with his father in one place since he left for college. Hell, he hadn’t even seen the man since his wedding.

“Hey! You made it!” Belle chirped from the porch as Neal followed his wife to the door.

“Yeah,” Emma said. “Bit touch and go there on some of these backroads, but I wasn’t going to let that stop us.”

“I’m so glad,” Belle said earnestly. “This must be Henry! Oh my goodness he’s so big!”

“Say ‘hi,’” Emma said to Henry, trying to angle him towards Belle who was cooing and waving to the baby. Henry didn’t seem particularly interested in meeting a stranger and was smiling and burying his face in his mom’s shoulder. “He’ll be friendlier if you give him food,” Emma said at last. “Like a labrador.”

“I think I can manage that,” Belle said cheerfully as she turned towards Neal. “How have you two been? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Neal wasn’t quite sure if that was meant as a dig or not, but it had been close to three years since the wedding and even longer since he’d been back home. No, Boston was home. Maine was just where he’d grown up and where his father lived with his wife. _Home_ implied a lot of things that he didn’t feel for this place.

“We’ve been good,” he said. “Busy with work, you know how it is.”

“I do,” Belle replied. “Your dad and I were so proud when we heard about your last promotion. Branch manager is a big deal.”

“Thanks,” he said, glancing toward Emma and hoping for something to make this less awkward. She was struggling to keep Henry in her arms while he tried to get her to drop him. “Oh, honey, let me take him. He must be tired…”

He reached for the toddler but Emma turned the baby away from him.

“Oh, he’s fine,” she said. “Just wants to explore I think.”

Traitor.

“Would you like to take a walk down to the lake?” Belle asked. “It’s not too far and you can let him get his feet wet and pick some flowers.”

“That’s a great idea!” Emma said brightly. “Neal, can you take our bags inside?”

What choice did he have besides nodding and going back to the car to grab the suitcases while the two women waved and set off laughing and talking. The house looked so much smaller than it had when he had been a kid – or maybe he’d just built it up in his mind so much over the years.

The thought of the lake brought back unbidden memories of summers spent happily. The three of them making bonfires at night and of fireworks in July, or of running off with friends from school and wandering backwoods trails that the adults hadn’t known of. There had been a strange level of freedom allowed him when they had been here, moreso than when they had lived in any other place.

His reverie was interrupted by the sight of his father standing there on the porch and watching him. Neal scowled at the interruption and slung Emma’s bag over his shoulder as he tried to dig out the large tote carrying Henry’s various necessities.

“Need any help?” Ewan Gold called out.

“Nah,” Neal called back. “I’ve got it. Your wife lured mine down to the lake with the baby. They’ll be back soon.”

“That’s good.”

His father seemed anxious, and Neal wondered how much of it was a desire to see his grandson and how much was feeling the same tension between them that was always there. He slammed the car door shut and made his way back up the porch feeling more like a pack mule than a man. How could three people need so much stuff?

“Belle put fresh sheets in the guest room,” his father said, holding the door open for Neal to walk through. “We put some things for Henry in your old room, but if you’d rather have him in with you guys I understand.”

Neal nodded and preceded his father into the house before heading towards the stairs. He heard the steady tapping of his father’s cane as the older man followed him at a distance. They’d put in new wallpaper in the time since Neal had left, and the guest room had been storage and a dream at that point. Otherwise, the inside was much as it had been and Neal had an easy enough time finding the bedroom to drop their things into. He’d let Emma worry about unpacking – payback would be his one way or the other, after all. He was also strangely curious about seeing his old room. His father said they’d bought some things for Henry, after all.

His father was still standing in the hallway when Neal emerged, and he moved closer silently as Neal crossed the hall to the door that had been his. Inside, a crib and a few unopened boxes of baby toys were the only indications that it had been longer than a few hours since Neal had left. His nicknacks still littered the shelves and his posters were still on the walls. There was even an old jacket still hanging off the desk chair, forgotten on a return from college for the holidays. Only the lack of dust on any of the surfaces told him that the door had been opened since then.

“We didn’t know what he’d like,” his father said. “But I thought it might be a good idea to have some things that can stay here for him to play with.”

Neal didn’t want that, and didn’t like the implication that they’d be coming back enough for Henry to need a separate set of toys. But at the same time, what could he say that wouldn’t start another fight? They’d only been here fifteen minutes and he was already sure this had been a bad idea.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he said at last. “I’ll let Emma show him when they get back.”

His father nodded and set off for the stairs, leaving Neal alone with his thoughts and the oppressive reality of being back.


	2. The Mermaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn how Belle and Ewan meet and get a glimpse of Neal's childhood.

The foreclosure notice hadn’t been a surprise when it came, but even knowing it was coming sooner or later it was still an unpleasant shock to find out they were losing the house. It had been a struggle to keep their heads above water after Milah left, but it hadn’t been enough and now Ewan had to find a place for them to go.

No one had ever told him adulthood would hold so many awful choices, but here he was with a kindergartener, an ex-wife who had served him papers from someplace in Nevada, and nowhere to go.

The circus was in town, and he took Neal. It was technically money they couldn’t spare, but twenty-five dollars wasn’t going to make any difference at this point. He was just trying to make one last pleasant memory for his son before it was too late, and Neal liked the animals.

Ewan had always been good with animals anyway, and there was a petting zoo. He had Neal on his knee while they slipped a little goat nibbles from a handful of feed they’d purchased for a quarter.

“Do you remember what baby goats are called?” Ewan asked.

“Kids,” Neal said.

“That’s right,” Ewan said. “And the moms are called nannies, did you know that?”

Neal shook his head _no_ and Bobby continued.

“What do you think they eat? Besides pellets.”

“Grass!” Neal said.

“Close. They can eat grass, but they prefer to eat leaves and bushes.”

He glanced over to the bored young man running the booth.

“Excuse me,” he called, drawing the man’s attention. “Do you keep their mothers here?”

“Yeah,” the boy replied. “She’s the black and white one in the corner. They don’t do real good being separated.”

Ewan sought out the nanny goat where she was grazing and nibbling up dropped food near another group. The kid bumped into his knee while he was distracted. Neal giggled and offered the kid another couple pieces, causing him to bleat happily and kick up his back legs. Ewan smiled at the pair of them and an idea kicked in.

“Wait here,” he told his son, standing up and walking to where the attendant stood. It was probably a silly idea, and there was no chance in the world of it working out...but he’d exhausted every single lead he had, and this was as good as any of them.

“Do you know who I could talk to about getting a job?” he asked the man, waiting until he was pointed towards another man who was circling amongst the various smaller pens.

He hadn’t come prepared to interview for a job, but thankfully they were apparently desperate and him being desperate wasn’t much of an issue for them, either. He had no idea why, but the guy was willing to give him a chance for the summer, at least. They’d travel with the circus, Ewan could take care of the animals, and at the end of the season he’d either be out of a job and hopefully in a new city where there were jobs to find or they’d keep him on and he and Neal could have a fresh start in the circus.

He made his way back to his son. The anxious feeling he’d become used to since he found out he was losing the house was still there, but now he was starting to feel the stirrings of _hope_.

“Did you have fun at the circus?” he asked as they drove home that night.

“Yeah,” Neal replied with a yawn.

“What was your favorite part?”

“The trapeze,” he said cheerfully. “And the tigers.”

“Yeah? Do you want to go back?”

“I’d like that,” Neal said with a firm little nod.

“How’d you like to go with them when they leave town?”

Neal looked at him quickly with confusion evident on his little face. He was going to have to be sold on this.

“Can people do that?” Neal asked.

“Of course,” he said. “We can travel the whole country taking care of animals.”

“But what about school?”

“You can do that from the road,” he said. “We’ll send your work in and a teacher will grade it and send it back.”

He glanced at his son’s face in the rearview mirror. Neal looked confused still. He wasn’t sure how to sell this one, but he was going to have to.

“It will be an adventure,” Ewan said. “We’ll see the whole country this summer, and if you hate it we can do something else next year, yeah?”

“What kind of adventure?”

“The best kind. We’ll be on a quest. There are always princesses to be saved, you know.”

“Think we’ll find momma?”

Ewan felt his throat constrict a little. Milah had been gone the better part of a year now but it still hurt every second he thought of her.

“Maybe, son,” he replied. “We can certainly look.”

 

Circus people certainly took care of their own, and finding people to look after Neal had turned out to not be a problem at all once they had settled in. The dancing girls in particular seemed fond of the boy, and since their performance schedules didn’t tend to overlap with the busy times for the petting zoo he’d generally tend to leave his son with them while they practiced and giggled and mended their costumes. Even if there was nobody in particular to mind him, there were always eyes on him somehow. If anything, it was a better situation than the one they’d left.

One day when they were in Maine, Neal was hanging around the petting zoo while Ewan cleaned the animals. Ewan knew his son was practicing his juggling (the brother-sister duo who did the juggling turned out to be almost as reliable at babysitting as the dancing girls, and they also seemed to have an eye towards having Neal join in their act at some point) but the gentle applause and feminine giggling was unexpected. He turned towards his son and saw a pair of teenage girls watching the boy take a bow.

“Bravo!” the brunette called out. “That was very good!”

Strangers weren’t particularly common behind the scenes, and he quickly rinsed off the miniature donkey he’d been shampooing and joined his son at the fence.

“What can we do for you ladies?”

“Oh, we’re here with our boss,” the redhead said. “We work for the Aquatica Water Park and he was seeing about having some of your performers come do a show. Cross promotion stuff, you know.”

“What do you do at the water park?” he asked, more to make conversation than any lingering suspicion. It wasn’t uncommon for the jugglers and acrobats to perform elsewhere to try to raise awareness of the circus being in town.

“We’re um, divers,” the brunette said, looking at Neal before cupping her hands in front of her face and mouthing the word _mermaids_ at Ewan.

Ewan couldn’t help but chuckle at her reluctance to spill that secret in front of a little boy who had spent an entire day learning sleight of hand from a magician.

“Neal, why don’t you go feed the animals for me?”

Neal nodded and pocketed the balls he’d been juggling before he went off to the shed to get a bucket and some animal food.

“He’s pretty much used to knowing the secrets behind magic,” Ewan told the girls. “But thank you for trying to spare him.”

“We take our alter egos very seriously in the mermaid business,” the brunette replied. “We’re not really supposed to tell anyone what we do and when we’re in tails we’re not allowed to give out our real names.”

“Yeah?” he said, suddenly remembering they hadn’t been introduced. “My name is Ewan, by the way. That was my son, Neal.”

“I’m Ariel,” the redhead said.

“Belle,” the brunette added. “You guys should come see our show!”

“Wouldn’t that give away your secret if Neal saw you?”

“They never recognize us,” Ariel replied. “My cousin brought her little girl once and she didn’t recognize me at all. He’ll never know he met us.”

“Even if he did, we have cover stories,” Belle continued. “It’ll be fun! We sit in a giant pool and talk to the kids and swim down in our tank to get them seashells. Plus there are fish in the tank and we teach the kids about the ocean so it’s educational. They love it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “I can usually get away during the daytime.”

“Sounds great!” Belle said. “We’ll see you there!”

The girls turned to leave and Belle offered a little wave followed by giggling, and he wasn’t entirely sure what that had all been about. Teenagers were a strange beast, but she had been right that Neal would more than likely enjoy getting away and seeing a theme park. 

 

Neal took to the mermaids better than Ewan had expected. He’d had a particular affinity for Ariel, who had been clothed in a green silicone tail and a purple seashell bikini top and was draped in fake flowers and seaweed. She’d waved him over immediately and dived down to fetch him a pretty conch shell off the tank floor. Belle, by contrast, was in a blue tail with a starfish bra and pearls. He could not imagine the tanlines those two had by the end of the summer.

They seemed to have a fairly decent routine figured out, with one diving for seashells while the other sang silly songs and answered questions about the fish before they’d switch. The sign by their tank advertised showtimes, and Neal was more than willing to stick around to watch the two girls talk about the ocean and then answer questions which were probably supposed to be about conservation and marine life but which seemed to mostly be about what it was like to be a mermaid and if they missed their underwater kingdom which they apparently returned to when the park closed down each fall.

He saw Belle one more time before they moved on. She’d come to the circus during normal hours and spent an unusually long time at the petting zoo for a teenager by herself and struck up a conversation during the downtime. That was how he learned she’d recently graduated high school and would be starting college that fall and that she worked the theme park during her summer vacations (and had to make it a point of going out to the beach a few times during the year just so she didn’t end up with a _completely_ baffling tan). She was a smart girl, but a little young and when she’d sweetly asked if he wanted to go to a party that she knew about on the beach that weekend he’d had to decline. He was dangerously close to thirty, and that was far, far too old to go to a party thrown by teenagers even if it was kind of sweetly flattering.

She didn’t come back that year, but Neal remembered the mermaids and when they were in town again he took his son back to the park. The same two girls were there, and as soon as they were noticed Belle dove down into the tank and retrieved a pretty scallop, swimming over to bring it to Neal and dangled from the side of the tank to chat a little.

“How are you?” she asked Neal, but with a glance to Ewan as she spoke. “Do you remember me from last year?”

Neal nodded with wide eyes and looked up to his father in awe that the mermaid remembered them. So much had happened that year, and having that little bit be predictable was invaluable.

“Are you going to stay for our show?” she asked.

“Yes,” Neal said.

“Great! Ask me lots of questions, okay?”

“I will!”

Belle waved and splashed with her tail as she returned to her rock and her companion, and they went to the bleachers to await the next show.

After that, it wasn’t entirely surprising when she returned to the petting zoo. She’d finished her first year of college and was full of cheerful stories of things she’d done and places she’d been. She came back two more times before they moved on to another town, and this time she gave him her address and asked him to write her when he was settled down for the off season.

It was a silly idea to keep in touch. They were only in the same state two weeks out of the entire year, but sometimes living in the circus became a little too insular for him, and as time passed and Neal grew more independent he found himself looking forward to those little glimpses of the outside world he’d left behind. She was a lifeline, in a way. Besides, she was engaged before graduation and she was far too young for him. It was just nice to get to know her.


	3. The Truth

Emma really couldn’t tell what was supposed to be so wrong about these people that Neal didn’t want to come here. Belle had taken her and Henry to the lake and splashed with the little boy for a little while, and when they’d come back Neal had been hiding on the patio while his dad sat inside quietly. It was like being the heroine of a gothic novel in the house full of secrets. She knew it wasn’t any kind of abuse, because even Neal would admit that nobody had ever laid a hand on him. Maybe she just didn’t understand because she’d never had parents, but it was impossible for her to wrap her head around it.

Dinner was cheap Japanese food takeout, and Neal’s dad went to pick it up. He came back with flowers for Belle and she didn’t seem at all surprised, which is when Emma realized there were vases of flowers all over the house.

“Aw, they’re beautiful,” Emma said as Neal set the table. “What’s the occasion?”

“I have to keep my mermaid happy,” Ewan said, kissing the side of Belle’s head and walking off to sit at the table with Henry.

“Mermaid?” Emma asked, not really sure what that meant. Well, she knew what a mermaid was it just wasn’t a term of endearment she was particularly familiar with.

“Oh, when we met I was an amusement park mermaid,” Belle replied. “It was right after the movie came out so we were in pretty high demand.”

“That sounds like it was so much fun,” Emma said. “So did you meet at the amusement park or what?”

“Didn’t Neal ever tell you?” Ewan asked as he handed his wife the vase. 

Emma glanced over to her husband, just in time to see him focusing entirely on his food. She wished she had some idea why this was such a big deal for him, but she shook her head _no_ in answer to the question.

“She washed up on the shore after a hurricane,” Ewan said with a knowing smile. “We helped her escape from the theme park and set up a new home in Maine. Then a few years later we were in Florida and I swear I saw her at the beach watching us and the next time we were in Maine I looked her up.”

Neal was rolling his eyes, but Belle was smiling at her husband like he’d hung the stars just for her.

“I actually met both of them when they were living with the circus,” Belle said. “I’d just graduated high school and the mermaid tank was my summer job before college. Ewan brought Neal to the park when they were in town and how could I resist the two of them?”

Belle said this last bit more toward her husband than the room, but Emma was looking at Neal and doing some math. If Belle was eighteen when she and Ewan met, that meant….

“So you were about five or six?” Emma asked her husband.

“He was six,” Ewan said instead.

“I didn’t know you guys had been married so long.”

“Oh God, no,” Belle said with a laugh. “They went off with the circus and I went to college. We didn’t reconnect until they left the circus when Neal was – oh gosh, he must have been ten? It’s hard to believe it was five whole years there, but I saw them every single summer without fail, and Ewan and I kept in touch with letters and stuff while they were away. I can’t even imagine having a stepson at eighteen – I was still a baby myself!”

Emma actually wasn’t so sure that twenty-three wasn’t still a little young to have a preteen, but it wasn’t really her business and Neal had turned out okay anyway.

“I had a crush on him that first summer, though,” Belle added with a grin towards Ewan. “But I think Neal liked my coworker Ariel so we were even.”

“Can you blame me?” Neal said with the first real smile Emma had seen on him all day. “No offense, Belle, but she looked a lot more like the mermaid in the movie. It was like a cartoon come to life.”

“All the kids liked her best!” Belle said. “I told them to let me wear a wig, but they didn’t want to risk it coming off when I was diving in front of the kids and of course my dad wouldn’t let me dye my hair so I had to be second fiddle all summer!”

“You were still the prettiest,” Ewan said, patting her hand affectionately. They were really cute together, but the whole thing seemed to be making Neal uncomfortable again.

 

She had no idea what the hell was wrong with him, but they got through dinner without any real issues, but Emma couldn’t relax entirely until it was finally time to go to bed and Neal finally settled down.

“So what’s your issue with Belle and your dad?” Emma asked. “You were acting really weird at dinner.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. She knew him well enough to know it wasn’t _nothing_ but she also knew if she gave him a couple minutes he’d keep talking. “It’s just weird for your dad to have a trophy wife, you know? She’s literally young enough that we could have the same parents.”

“But you don’t have the same parents.”

“It’s still weird. She was literally a teenager when we met her and he was my age. I can’t imagine marrying a teenager now.”

“She wasn’t a teenager when they got married,” Emma said, but she didn’t think it’d make much difference to his opinion on the subject, but still. “I just don’t get why you’re stuck on this. They seem happy enough.”

“Don’t take their side.”

“I’m not on their ‘side.’ I’m on Henry’s side and I’m on our family’s side and I think it’d be nice to have them around more, that’s all.”

He didn’t respond, and she didn’t know what else to say. There was a part of her that could kind of see his point. It probably was kind of weird to have a stepmom who was so much younger than your dad. But at the same time, the family seemed to have been a happy one and Emma had been so desperate as a little girl for a family that she would have taken whatever composition she’d been offered.

She huffed and changed into her pajamas before joining him in the bed. She loved him, but he was being ridiculous.

“I’m just saying,” she continued. “There are worse things in the world than having a young stepmom.”

“You know I didn’t know that story of how they actually met before now?” he replied, rolling over. “I’d only ever heard the hurricane version. I just don’t get why he can’t be honest with me about anything. There always has to be some big magical story attached to every little thing. It makes it impossible to have any kind of adult conversation.”

“Well, honey, maybe you should ask him?”

“I’ve tried! I tried the entire time I was growing up and it was always the same thing. He just can’t be honest with me.”

“But you’re a grown up now,” she said. “And you’ve got a kid of your own. Maybe it’s time to ask again?”

He groaned and rolled away from her. 

“I don’t want to have that conversation with him _again_.”

“I’m just saying, if you want him to actually talk to you about it then you need to bring it up. And if he doesn’t tell you the truth, then you can be angry again.”

“Okay fine,” he said. “But I reserve the right to be miserable until tomorrow.”

“Fine,” she replied. “You do that and I’m going to sleep.”

 

Neal really didn’t want to try talking with his dad. He’d tried it a million times in high school and college trying to get straight answers from him about everything from where his mother was to the numerous business trips he’d gone on throughout Neal’s childhood, but it was always more of the same fairy tales. 

But maybe Emma was right and this time would be different. Neal hadn’t ever known the story about meeting Belle when he was five. He’d remembered her from later years, and of course he’d known his father’s story about her being a rescued mermaid and that she’d followed them down the coast to Florida – _that_ one had been a regular fixture of his childhood to the point that if Neal had to hear about it again he might actually scream.

Neal found his father on the patio watching Belle and Emma and Henry rolling a ball in the yard.

“Hey Dad,” Neal said. “How’s it going?”

“Good, good,” his father replied, nodding towards the trio on the lawn. “Your son has a future as a footballer, I think.”

“Oh yeah? Good to know. Might save us money on his college.”

“He takes after you with the ball, and you could have been great if you’d stuck with it.”

“Yeah, my heart wasn’t ever really in it.”

“You always did prefer juggling anyway.”

The mention of his time in the circus was a weird throwback. Neal didn’t think about it too much anymore except when he was here. He’d loved the circus – it hadn’t been until his father’s accident that he’d realized how much he had loved it, and by then it had been over.

“The juggling was fun,” Neal replied. “I don’t know how much I liked performing, though.”

“No? You were so good at it.”

“Everyone always said that. I was always just petrified of dropping something.”

“You know, if you’d wanted to stop I wouldn’t have made you do it.”

“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t want to disappoint anybody and like you said, I was good at it. I did like some of it, though. The money was pretty good.”

“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t legal,” his father said with a chuckle. “But you were adorable when you were performing. And you _were_ good at it, even if you were scared.”

They sat in silence for a little while, and Neal was sure they were both thinking the same things.

“So while we’re reminiscing, can I ask you something?” Neal said.

“Sure.”

“Why did we join the circus?”

“Why are you asking this?”

“Well, we had a house before, right? Why’d we leave and go to the circus?”

“God, Neal, it was a million years ago.”

“It was twenty-five years ago,” Neal replied. “It’s a part of my life and I don’t know any of it.”

“It was an adventure,” his dad said. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just want to know why.”

“We talked about it then.”

“You told me it was an adventure.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“That’s not the point! I’m an adult, can’t you just talk to me like I’m an adult?”

His father looked stricken and Neal wasn’t sure what to say beyond that. There had always been this gulf between them and it suddenly felt unbridgeable. His father didn’t know him, and he never had.

“It’s my history,” Neal said at last. “I just know if it was my son, I’d want him to know his past.”

“What do you want me to say here?” his dad asked. “Do you want me to tell you that the bank foreclosed and the circus was the only place that would have us? Do you wish I’d told you that when you were a little boy? If you do, then I’m sorry but I did the best I could with what I had which was a son and no job.”

There was no response to that Neal could make. This was one of the mysteries of his life that he’d never been able to uncover, and now he had the answer and half of him was pushing for more but his father was looking away and tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. Why was this such a big deal? Why hadn’t he wanted to tell him this? And if this part was so hard for his father, then how was Neal ever going to find out the rest of it?


	4. The Elephant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ewan deals with the fallout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy your pain.

Neal was doing well in the circus, and Ewan was just relieved to have found a place for them. There was always a little extra money if he was careful, and once Neal was about eight he started performing with the jugglers before the main show. His job was mostly to be cute and stand in between the Callahan twins as they tossed clubs back and forth around him for the early crowds.

Ewan wasn't entirely sure how comfortable he felt with his child being an obstacle, but they didn't bring out fire and swords until their show under the big top and Neal loved having a side job. They taught him how to juggle a few small balls and paid him a couple dollars for helping with their shows, and that was good enough. At least he hadn't taken up with the trapeze artists, and as Neal got older and better at his own tricks he started taking on a bigger role in the show and making a little more money.

If they'd stayed with the circus, Ewan was sure Neal probably would have become an honorary Callahan. The sister was particularly motherly towards the little boy and on occasion Neal would leave with a hole in his shirt only to return with a little patch sewn over it. They were all thriving, until suddenly they weren't.

It was a freak accident that did it, but then again what other kind were there in the circus? Most of Ewan’s time was spent with the smaller animals of the petting zoo. Anything larger than a pony was handled by trainers who used them in their shows, with one exception: when the animals were loaded into their carts to move to a new town everyone helped everyone else. Otherwise you'd end up with elephants outnumbering handlers in a situation that elephants were not instinctively prepared for.

Their zoo had phased out use of electric prods and whips before Ewan and Neal had joined (their current handler preferred positive reinforcement to discipline and the animals did seem to respond well to her), but it was still a dicey prospect to convince half a dozen large mammals to walk into a truck no matter how you did it, and when they were leaving Orlando nothing was going right.

After almost five years, moving the big animals had become terrifyingly routine. His job was to stand with some of the other animal handlers to make a path between the elephant paddock and the trailer that they would travel in. This time, a storm was picking up and everyone was anxious to get on the road before they were possibly flooded in for another few days and the elephants could sense the tension. There was one particularly skittish one named Shirley who had recently been purchased from another circus and personally Ewan didn't think that trainer had known what the hell he was doing. She didn't take instruction well and seemed convinced that everything was out to get her. The poor girl probably needed to be retired to a zoo, to be perfectly frank.

So, despite his personal misgivings about her, Ewan was standing at the last leg of the human pathway trying to load Shirley into the truck, just next to the ramp she needed to take up into it. Everything had been going smoothly until a bolt of lightning hit nearby, followed quickly by a loud rumble of thunder which would have startled anyone, but for an elephant with shaky nerves it was particularly frightening.

Everyone leapt into action trying to settle her as quickly as possible, but she wasn't particularly interested in them. She wanted to be back with the herd as quickly as possible and she started to turn, bowling him over in the process. Ewan had certainly been knocked over by an elephant's rear end before and usually it wasn't a bad prospect – it wasn’t _great_ but if you were quick you could recover. They were generally moving forward so as long as you immediately got back up you were okay. By and large, they didn't want to hurt you.

Shirley didn't want to hurt him, either, he was sure of that. Trying to piece the event together later, he thought she was probably frightened by the other handlers who had moved in closer when she had begun acting erratically. She backed up, and stepped down on his foot and ankle.

The pain was excruciating, though the shock and adrenaline spared him the worst of it. His memories got much less vivid as that particular day wore on. He remembered the ambulance, and screaming for someone to take Neal someplace where he couldn't see (though he didn't remember if Neal was actually there or not) and after that his next lucid memory was of waking up in the hospital with his foot in traction.

The doctors said he was lucky – the ground had been soft and his foot had sunk into the dirt so it hadn't been completely crushed. He would keep the leg, he would walk again with a cane, and he could have a rich fulfilling life. But he had lost his job – the circus couldn't wait for him to recover, and even if it _had_ been the off-season he didn't think he'd ever be able to perform the manual labor required to care for the animals ever again.

To make matters even worse, Neal had been placed in a group home while Ewan recuperated, which just added to his need to get them settled _someplace_ as soon as possible. He’d been scanning help wanted pages, but the listings were just taunting him until he could walk again. In the meantime, he started making lists of anything he could possibly do and anyone he could possibly go to for help. It was a depressingly short list, but there was nothing for it. He didn’t have many people he could ask for help, but if he had to beg then he would beg. Pride was secondary to taking care of his son.

 

Ewan had left the hospital as soon as they’d let him. Between surgery and recovery time, it had taken six weeks before they would clear him to leave the hospital and he’d only managed to see his son a handful of times in the interim. Worker’s comp had covered the hospital, and he was eligible for disability benefits, but that wasn’t really enough to raise a child on. Still, at least they weren’t penniless when they boarded a bus to Maine with the clothes on their backs and a box of personal possessions that had been delivered to the hospital after Ewan had been there for a month.

The only person had been able to offer them any help at all had been Belle French. He’d been corresponding with her on and off since he’d first met the teenage mermaid, although now she was a college graduate and engaged to boot. She was also, it turned out, the daughter of a bank president and she had promised Ewan that she would find him a job at the bank if she had to walk down there herself and make one up. Neal was sullen and Ewan couldn’t blame him – the boy had lost the family they’d built in the circus and had to live as a ward of the state for the last month and a half. It was the second time in his short life that he had lost his family.

“It’s going to be okay,” Ewan said more to himself than his son. “You’ve always liked Maine whenever we’ve gone in the past. And you like Belle.”

“Yeah,” Neal said, rolling his eyes. “Sure.”

Ewan watched his son as they boarded the bus, suddenly aware that his son was on the cusp of adolescence. How were they ever going to survive all this?

 

* * *

 

 

“How are you feeling?” Belle asked her husband. Ewan was laying on their bed with his bad leg up on a cushion and staring at the ceiling, and she knew that look on his face – something was bothering him.

“I’m fine,” he said absently.

“No you’re not,” she said, sitting next to his feet and trailing her hand across his old injury, tracing the surgical scars and feeling where the pins had been placed to hold the bones together all those years ago. It had never fully healed, but then the doctors had never given them any reason to think that it would. She pulled his leg into her lap and started rubbing his foot while she waited for him to suck it up and spill.

“Neal wants me to tell him more about our lives,” he finally said.

“Oh?”

“He wants to know the real stories – he thinks I’ve been hiding things from him.”

“Have you?”

“No,” he said quickly, before thinking about it for a moment. “Not intentionally, at least.”

“Well, then what’s so bad about that?” she asked. “He’s a grown man. You can’t protect him forever.”

He closed his eyes and leaned back into the pillows, and she knew what he was going to say before he even opened his eyes again.

“He’s my son,” he said after a spell, and she could feel his eyes on her again. “He’s always going to be my little boy. It was my job to protect him and I failed.”

Belle had always suspected this was the crux of her husband’s issues with his son, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it – it was a wound that had been festering longer than she’d been in the picture He’d always sheltered his son, and she could certainly appreciate that urge. There were certainly things that Neal had been too young to understand as they had been happening, but that had been so long ago now.

“He’s older than you were when you had him,” she said at last. “And older than I was when we got married.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I just mean, he’s got a son now. He’s old enough.”

“I don’t want him to know I failed.”

And that was really the issue. They’d been talking around it in every conversation with or about Neal that they’d had for the last ten years and at least now it was out in the open. Belle set Ewan’s foot back down on the cushion and crawled up to curl in bed next to him in lieu of answering. He pulled her closer and they laid like that for so long she started to think he might have gone to sleep.

She was desperately in love with her husband. That was really all that there was to it. He was frustrating, and stubborn, and she’d be with him until one of them died. She knew that some people thought that they were a strange pair, and had been an even odder one when they’d first married – she’d been supposed to marry a business major who would take over the bank someday and instead she’d married a single father who’d worked as a teller, but she hadn’t ever regretted it. It had been hard, but she was happier than she thought she ever could have been with anyone else.

“Did I ever tell you you’re smarter than me?” he said, snapping her out of her reverie. So apparently he was not asleep. “My brilliant wife.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she said. “You’re good to me. And you’re not a failure.”

He sighed and she could feel some of the tension drain out of him. He was always so afraid of being a disappointment. She didn’t know what she was going to do with him sometimes.

“I’m glad I married you,” she continued. “I really am. I wouldn’t trade our family for the world.”

She looked up at him and he tilted his head down to kiss her forehead. She _was_ happy with their life together, she just hoped that maybe they could be just a little bit happier going forward.


	5. Love Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal learns about his father's love life.

Ewan was doing well enough at the bank, but it was hard to forget how woefully unqualified he was for his job. Everyone else was either younger than him or far more experienced. He'd spent the last few years working in a circus and he was still in a significant amount of pain from the injury. Honestly, he wasn’t sure the doctors had done him a favor by saving the leg. He tried to avoid his pain medication during the work day, but it was a struggle to make sure that they ate each night simply because he couldn’t stand that long. His other option was to take pain medications that made him exhausted and fuzzy brained, and sometimes made it hard to focus at work. Neal was getting moodier, and Ewan just wanted to go back to the way things had been but there was no going back. This was his life now.

If there was a bright side to being crippled and alone in Maine, it was Belle. At least once a week she’d come and demand he go out to lunch with her. It didn’t necessarily win him a lot of love from his direct supervisor (her fiance), but it wasn’t like anyone dared to question their boss’s daughter and if she insisted on taking a teller out for lunch then nobody dared to say anything if she brought him back a little late.

At first he’d thought she was just being kind by befriending him when she knew he was here alone. As time went on and she didn’t stop checking up on him, he slowly started to realize that she was lonely. It boggled his mind – she was beautiful, young, privileged, and engaged – how could _she_ be lonely? And yet, there she was taking him out to lunch regularly just to talk about her day.

“I hate wedding planning,” she said during one of their lunches. “It’s just so ridiculous! I’m spending all this time and money picking out colors and dresses and table settings that _nobody_ is going to pay any attention to and it’s all going to be over in a single day.”

“Then why are you doing it?” he asked her. “It’s supposed to be your choice, so why not have a small ceremony or just elope?”

“But it’s _not_ my choice,” she replied. “At least not really. My father and Gaston want a big wedding, they just don’t want to any of the work.”

“Did you tell them that you don’t?”

“Of course I did. But apparently _every_ woman really wants to plan a wedding. At least I’m not the one paying for it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounds incredibly annoying.”

“It’s not so bad, I just wish they’d listen to me. Or help.”

“They should. I can’t imagine just leaving you to do all the hard work for something you don’t even want.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” she said. “It just drives me crazy is all.”

She smiled sweetly at him, like she was worried that he was going to worry. The longer they spent together, the more he realized that she didn’t have anyone she could really confide in and maybe that was why she’d been so eager to send him letters when she went to college.

“How are you and Neal settling in?” she said after a little while. “Is he liking school?”

“I think he’s adjusting,” Ewan replied. “He’s – there have been a lot of changes this year. And he’s not really used to a classroom or being around other children.”

“I didn’t think about all that,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “It must be so rough for you two to settle down after all your adventures. I’ve always wanted to get to travel like that, but my father insisted on college first and then well...Gaston.”

“They weren’t that adventurous, and circus campsites look the same no matter where you are.”

“Still, you must have _some_ exciting stories, don’t you?”

He thought back, trying to come up with something to tell her. He was afraid that she’d built him up in her head to be more interesting than he really was, but at the same time it was so nice to have her attention. Maybe it was inappropriate, but he was just a man and she was beautiful and getting married. What could it really hurt to indulge her?

“Have you ever been to the southwest?” he asked at last. “Nevada, New Mexico, that area?”

“I’ve never been out of New England,” she replied. “But I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”

“It is. We went to see the Grand Canyon when we were out there.” He didn’t think that would impress her too much but it was worth mentioning at least, Belle didn’t strike him as the sort to want to place too much importance on tourist destinations. “I did manage to take a day to take him to tour the the Hopi land.”

“Really?” Belle’s eyes had lit up and she was leaning forward eagerly now. “I had to do a project about them in high school. Was it wonderful?”

“It was,” he replied. Neal had been far more interested in the giftshop than in the religious ceremonies, and he was wracking his brain trying to remember all the details for her. “The mesas were majestic, and we were allowed to sit in on a katsina dance.”

“That sounds so interesting,” she said dreamily. “I wish I could have gone.”

“Why don’t you?”

“There’s a wedding to plan,” she said, screwing her face up distastefully. “And the honeymoon is the one part of it that I’m _not_ in charge of.”

“Where do you think you’ll go?”

“I’m not sure, probably some resort someplace or a cruise.”

“It sounds nice.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will be. Everything will be completely taken care of and safe and sanitized to ensure we don’t actually have to feel anything real the entire time we’re there. Maybe we’ll even go snorkeling,” she said bitterly, flopping back in her chair a little like a petulant child and stewing for a second before she deflated and turned back to look at him. “Sorry. I know it’s a stupid thing to get upset about. I just wish I could have a chance to do something that hasn’t been scheduled and planned for me.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “You’re an adult, you should be allowed to have some say in where you go.”

She looked at him and smiled in relief, and he really wanted her to keep smiling like that forever. He thought he might still have a keychain he’d picked up in the Hopi Lands giftshop in the box of circus memorabilia. He’d dig it out and bring it the next time they went to lunch – he was sure she’d appreciate that.

 

Emma hadn't been kidding when she said she fully intended to take advantage of free grandparent childcare, and Neal had been told in no uncertain terms that Henry was staying at home with Grandpa while Emma and Belle went shopping and got lunch. Neal was given the option of staying home with his father and son or finding his own way to amuse himself, but if he disrupted Henry's naptime by taking the toddler with him then he was responsible for childcare for the next forty-eight hours or however long it took to put his sleep schedule to rights.

It had been a little bit of overkill, because Neal didn't mind his father being around Henry so much. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome, but Neal did remember his dad had always been good with babies and toddlers. Sometimes he wondered why he'd ended up an only child given that fact, but he'd never asked. It hadn't ever really seemed appropriate, and in any event that ship may or may not have sailed and it was definitely none of Neal's business if it had.

The reality of what to do with his day hadn't really hit him until the two women were out the front door, but he definitely didn't think he could handle all day alone with his father no matter what he’d wanted to talk with him about, and he needed some time to put his thoughts together before he made any overtures. Besides, his dad was watching him strangely and Neal just needed to breathe for a few hours.

“I'm going to go for a walk,” Neal said more to himself than his father, although his father nodded in something like relief at the statement. “I'll be home by lunch.”

“Take your time,” his father said. “I'll be here and Henry and I are becoming fast friends.”

“Yeah, alright. You've got my cell number if you need anything?”

“I do, but we'll be fine. I’ve got some experience, you know.”

His father punctuated the point by picking Henry up and bouncing him on his hip as much as the cane allowed, and as he left Neal could hear Henry's shrieks of laughter. It would be okay. The trip would only be a few more days and then they'd all be back home, but in the meantime Neal had been fighting an itch to go exploring since they'd been in town. He'd walked the trails behind his father's house when he was a boy and most of his best stories involved those woods, so he made his way through the treeline to the paths of his youth and let himself wander.

The trails were a lot more overgrown now than they had been when he was younger, and there were houses now where there hadn't been before, but it was soothing to be out in nature like this. He wanted these kinds of experiences for Henry someday, the freedom to wander and to be self-sufficient even in a very limited way. Neal had spent hours out here under the canopy of the trees and sliding down the Cascades in the creek that cut through the woods about half a mile out from his dad's place. He was a little too old to do that anymore, but not too old to sit under a tree nearby and think about things.

It was important to Emma that they cling to whatever family they could. The longer they were here, the more sure Neal was that she'd come here hoping to find a family for herself as much as Henry, and it was bothering him that his own hurt feelings were keeping Emma from whatever it was she was looking for. They had bonded over a lot of hurt feelings and abandonment issues, but he was starting to realize that he hadn't understood how badly growing up in foster care had bothered her. She hadn't ever known her parents, and the one time she'd almost been adopted had fallen through. She didn't have a stable home until she was fifteen. By comparison, his middle class adolescent angst was starting to feel a little shallow. If Henry having grandparents was that important to Emma then Neal would try again. He owed her at least one more conversation with his dad.

It wasn't quite lunchtime yet when Neal got back and Henry was still going strong. Neal carefully avoided his father as the two traded off watching the toddler with cooking lunch, and aside from Henry's babbling for the most part the meal was entirely silent. Neal was sure his father knew what was coming, because after he cleared the table he sat back down at the kitchen table as Neal put Henry down for his nap. He had no idea how to even begin this conversation again, but he joined his father anyway.

“Would you like a drink?” his father asked when they'd both been silent too long.

“I think that's probably a good idea,” Neal replied.

His dad came back with two bourbon lemonades, and Neal almost laughed at the comedy of the whole thing. Two grown men who could barely string a sentence together for each other and needed to drink after lunch just to think about it.

“Alright,” his dad said. “What do you want to talk about?”

That was a loaded question, wasn't it? Neal wanted to know everything. He had questions that needed answers, but there were so many he didn't even know where to begin asking them.

“Why did you travel so much when I was a kid?” Neal said at last. It seemed the easiest place to start, with his father's absences.

“That was my job,” he said, sounding a little confused. “I went out to meet clients and oversee investments for the bank. I went where they sent me.”

“Why did you take a job that would require you to travel so much?”

His father smiled a little bitterly and took a sip of his drink.

“Because Belle's father hated me and after she told him we were getting married that was the best he'd do for us.”

“So why didn't you find another job not working for the bank?”

“Doing what? I had a limp and no degree. I only got my first job there as a teller because Belle pulled some strings. I couldn't have taken care of the two of you if I'd quit.”

“What about Belle's money?”

Neal knew she'd had some inheritance from her mother's family, because they had purchased the house with it and he remembered the days they'd get the annual check as being particularly cheerful occasions.

“That was in a trust run by her father. We couldn't touch the bulk of it until he died, and he was less than helpful with letting us have advances on it.”

Neal took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. This was all news to him, and he wasn’t sure he understood exactly why this had all been kept from him. Maybe when he was a younger it made sense, but his father had been on the road at least two weeks a month until after Neal had gone off to college. It boggled his mind that nobody had ever thought to tell him _that_ was why.

“Why didn’t you tell me about all this?” he asked.

“You were a little boy, what was I supposed to tell you? We saw him every year for Christmas, and he liked you fine. I didn’t see a point in rocking the boat.”

So he’d let Neal think that his father wanted to be away from his family instead. Neal didn’t know what to think about any of this. He’d never liked Belle’s father even though the man had always been nice enough to him – had he picked up on some of the tension? And finances certainly had gotten better once he was in college which was around the time Maurice had died unexpectedly. But why hadn’t anyone ever _told him_ before right now?

“So why did Belle have him hire you?” Neal asked. “And why’d he go along with it if he hated you so much?”

“He didn’t hate me at first,” his father said reluctantly. He was staring at the ceiling and leaning back in his chair like if he pretended hard enough he wouldn’t be having this conversation. “He didn’t hate me until Belle broke up with her fiance and he found out we had been...dating.”

 _That_ was all news to Neal and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Also, the way his father had said ‘dating’ didn’t really sit right with him – it really didn’t sound like they were going out so much as staying in on these ‘dates.’

“So you two had an affair,” Neal finally said and his father nodded.

“She wasn’t married,” he said weakly. “But that is why the marriage was broken off.”

“Is that why she got you the job?”

“No, nothing like that. Our relationship started after I’d been working at the bank for a few months. I was in a lot of pain and depressed, and she wasn’t happy with her ex and it just sort of _happened._ ”

“And you weren’t sleeping together when we first met her?” Neal said, wanting to press for an answer here. She’d been barely out of high school when they’d met her, and it had always bugged him.

“We exchanged letters while she was in college, but until we moved to Maine I never spent more than a few minutes at a time with her. Why?”

“No reason. I just – I always wondered about that.” Neal didn’t want to admit he’d judged his father for sleeping with a high school student when he’d been so much older than her, not that having an affair was that much better but it still felt a lot different to know they’d both been old enough to drink. “So who was this guy she was supposed to marry?”

“My boss,” his father said, still sounding a little ashamed of the whole thing. “They met at college. He was kind of a jerk, and I think she was really looking for a way out by the time we met.”

Neal couldn’t keep from smiling, and then he just had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

“So Belle got you a job working for her jerk fiance at her father’s bank and you had an affair right under his nose? Jesus, Dad, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“It’s not really that funny,” his father said weakly, but he was smiling now, too. “It was actually a huge scandal and I almost lost my job except she threatened to elope if her father didn’t move me to another department. I didn’t even know we were that serious until then, but thank God we were. You can see why I didn’t want to tell you all of this, can’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Neal replied. He felt weirdly lighter now about this whole situation. His father had been a homewrecker and had tried to conceal that fact, but the truth felt so much better than the lie. Maybe it was the whisky in the lemonade, but he was glad to more now than he had before. It wasn’t the worst of any of their issues, but it was something at last.


	6. Rescues & Maidens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The floor drops out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The is probably the most stubborn and impulsive Belle I've got, and that's saying something.

Belle felt... _good_. She knew what they were doing was wrong, but she didn’t really care. Ewan listened to her, he was kind to her, and he was a damn good kisser. She was still supposed to be marrying somebody else, but she was starting to think she was going to go insane if she didn’t get to blow off some steam. 

It had started innocently enough, with a keychain. It was a sterling silver katsina doll with a token that said _Hopi Lands_ and it made her ridiculously happy. It was such a thoughtful gift, and he’d gone out of his way to find it for her just to gift it to her and she’d been so overwhelmed and pleased that she’d kissed his cheek in thanks. He’d blushed and she’d felt warm all over and that had been the end of it...for a little while. She’d gone home that night and been in bed before it occurred to her that she didn’t remember the last time she’d felt so good after kissing someone. It was an unsettling revelation, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She wasn’t even sure what the _right_ thing to do was in this situation.

She’d agreed to marry Gaston. The wedding date was set, her father was over the moon, and there had been announcements in all the papers. She barely knew Ewan, but she’d at the same time she'd known him for years in the letters they’d swapped. She knew him inside and out, and she’d told him things she hadn’t told anyone else. That had to be it, didn’t it? Or maybe it was just a stupid crush or stress or something else. It didn’t have to mean anything, but it still felt like it meant _everything_.

It was ridiculous, she knew it was ridiculous. She was engaged! Sure, it wasn’t an exciting relationship, but it wasn’t supposed to be exciting after three years. Belle wasn’t a child, she knew that relationships were hard work and she was just being spoiled by wanting something more out of it but it was impossible not to want more some days.

She didn’t usually take Ewan to lunch two days in a row, but she had to prove to herself it had been nothing and she found herself close to the bank by lunchtime. She kissed Gaston quickly when he saw her, but that little flip of her stomach was absent until the second she saw Ewan. He looked surprised to see her, but not in a bad way. She was completely sunk.

They never actually made it into the restaurant. She’d thanked him for the keychain and kissed his cheek again just to see if it still felt the same way and when it did she couldn’t help herself and she kissed him quickly on the lips.

“What was that?” Ewan said, looking at her in confusion.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. “I just wanted to see how it would feel.”

“Oh,” he said in a breath. “How did it feel?”

It felt a lot like waking up – like she’d held her breath for too long and finally got her first gulp of oxygen. It just felt _right_.

“I don’t know,” she said instead. “I liked it.”

“I did, too.”

His voice was so soft and far away, like he almost didn’t believe it had happened and to be honest she was having a hard time figuring out why she’d done it. But it felt _right_ , and the most rational thought she had was that she really just wanted to do it again. She must have shown it on her face somehow, because he leaned forward and kissed her again. She felt her heart in her throat as she kissed him back and he thrust his hands into her hair and she was completely gone. It was such a relief somehow to touch him like this at last, even though she hadn’t been aware of wanting to do so before just now. It was a terrible idea in so many ways, but she’d never felt like that when someone kissed her before in her entire life.

 

Belle had given herself rules over this. Maybe it didn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but having them made her feel a little better about having an affair. Not that having rules had stopped much – she wasn't supposed to have kissed him the first time, she wasn't supposed to have kissed him again, and she certainly wasn't supposed to have had sex with him. Yet here she was in a hotel room with Ewan Gold for the third time in a month. The first time it had almost felt like an accident, like something in the direction of the wind and butterflies flapping their wings on the other side of the world had swept them into a midrange hotel room she had paid for where they spent a torrid hour before they put their clothes back on without looking at each other and swore it would never happen again. And then, it had happened again. And again.

They had worked this out into a science. She couldn't kidnap him for a long lunch every day or people would get more suspicious, so she'd started coming to visit Gaston three times a week and Ewan twice. He couldn't leave his house after his son went to bed, but she could make excuses to be out and if she was very careful and very quiet, they could sometimes manage an encounter in his bed. She parked down the street, and sometimes would stay overnight, hiding in his bedroom until Neal had left for school. Her father thought she was with Gaston, and Gaston thought she was at home. It was becoming the only part of her day she looked forward to. 

Gaston was pushing her to move in together, and she knew that she should call things off with Ewan and move into her fiance's apartment and settle down, but she just couldn't bring herself to do so. They would stop after the wedding. They'd talked it over in the long hours between sleeping together and falling asleep, and they both agreed that a time limit was for the best. She kept pushing the date of the wedding back, and she didn't want to admit why, but in her heart of hearts she knew that she wouldn't ever be loyal to Gaston s long as Ewan was in the picture and she didn't want to face that truth about herself any more than she wanted to go back to her life the way it had been. Ewan looked at her like he really saw her, and she didn't feel like anyone else did – not her father, and certainly not Gaston.

The longer they went without being caught, the more careless they were getting. She could sense it, but she had a hard time stopping it. They were complacent, and happy, and she was drunk on him and making bad choices. Until, one day, it all came crashing down on them.

They had been making out in her car in an alley behind the pharmacy where she was sure nobody would come looking for them when suddenly Ewan's door swung open and he was pulled out. It took Belle a second to register what was going on, but she managed to get out of the car in time to see Gaston take a swing at Ewan which sent him sprawling in the asphalt. She screamed as Ewan went down and rushed around the car before Gaston could land any more blows, inserting herself between the men. 

“What the hell, Belle?” Gaston exclaimed. “ _This_ is what you've been doing the last two months? Sleeping with him?”

The way he spat the word _him_ at Ewan set her hackles up, as though her biggest sin was her choice of man and not the affair itself.

“This is between you and me,” she replied. “Leave him out of it.”

Once she was sure that Gaston wouldn't attack again she turned to check on Ewan. He was still on the ground, but he'd propped himself up which was a good sign and she knelt next to him. He was going to have a may black eye later, but somehow that just made her like him even more.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he replied, still watching Gaston warily. Belle hooked her arm under Ewan's and helped him back to his feet. It was a good excuse to not deal with Gaston yet, though she knew it was coming. She couldn't even pretend like she hadn't been in the wrong, either. 

“Is this why you've been postponing the wedding?” Gaston said angrily. “You were too busy sleeping around to plan it?”

She grimaced, and turned away from Ewan again. This conversation had been a long time in coming.

“The wedding is off,” she said simply, pulling the ring off her finger and holding it out to him. “I'm sorry it had to happen like this, but I don't think either of us was going to make the other one happy.”

“I can't believe this,” he hissed, snatching it out of her hand and shoving it into his pocket. “You really think you're both going to get away with this? I hope she was with it, Ewan, because you're obviously fired.”

“You can't do that!” Belle exclaimed before Ewan could even respond.

“I actually can,” Gaston said. “He's in my department and I don't know if you've noticed but he's been late from lunch _a lot_ the last few weeks. I let it slide because I _thought_ he was helping you. I just didn't realize he was helping you with his dick.”

He turned and stormed off. Belle glanced back at Ewan and her heart broke at his face. He was pale and obviously shaken.

“Gaston wait!” she called out, running after her former fiance and blocking him physically once she'd caught up. “This isn't fair! You can't punish him for my mistake. You _know_ he has a son, what are they supposed to do?”

“That's not my problem,” Gaston replied. “Maybe you both should have thought of that.”

He shoved past her, and jogged across the street to where his car was parked. Belle’s mind was going a mile a minute as she hurried back to her own car and Ewan.

“It's okay,” she said more to herself than him. “I'm going to fix this.”

“How?”

“I don't know yet,” she admitted. “I'm going to get you your job back, to start.”

She didn't think it was a good idea to bring him back by the bank, So she got a room at the hotel and left him there so she could go her her father's office by herself. She didn't technically have any real power there, but ultimately her father controlled all the hiring and firing and she wasn't above pulling strings. The secretary only barely tried to stop her from walking right into his office. Gaston was already there of course, and she had no doubt his version of events was going to most closely match her father's. Neither man greeted her, but by this point she was angry enough that she didn't care one way or the other how they felt about her. Her one concern was that they didn't take it out on Ewan.

“We need to talk,” Belle said, ignoring Gaston as much as possible.

“I would say so,” her father replied, taking a stack of papers from Gaston and tossing them onto his desk in front of her. “Care to explain these?”

They were photos, but it took her a second to recognize herself in them. They were all of her and Ewan – in her car, going into a hotel, arriving at his apartment at night and leaving the next morning. 

“You had me followed?” she asked sharply, looking between her father and Gaston, trying to decide which had done it.

“You were cheating on me,” Gaston replied. “You don't get to be angry I hired a private investigator.”

She didn't have a good reply for that, so she dropped the pictures back on her father's desk.

“Alright fine, you caught me and I'm guilty,” she said. “I'll sew a bright red A into all my clothes and the townspeople can shun me as they see fit. But Papa, you can't let him punish Ewan over this!”

“If you thought his job was so important maybe you shouldn't have kept him out so long,” Gaston replied sharply. “I have control over my department!”

She narrowed her eyes at him but then turned back to her father.

“Please, Papa, he has a son!”

“This is ridiculous. Gaston can fire whomever he wants from the tellers, and I won't override that,” her father said at last, turning back to Gaston. “Can you excuse us? I believe my daughter and I have a lot more to discuss here.”

Gaston smirked at her as he left and she resisted the urge to throw something at his back for hitting Ewan earlier – she didn't think her father would not understand that at all.

“Do you mind telling me what the hell you were thinking?” Maurice asked as soon as the door was closed. “You should count yourself lucky you got caught _before_ the wedding when your assets would be combined, and you had better go apologize to him and see if you can't work all this out.”

“I will not,” she said. “I should have ended things with him months ago and I'm sorry I didn't, but I'm not going to try to fix something that is so fundamentally broken.”

“Dammit, Belle, are you insane? Do you know what people are going to say about all this?”

“I do, and I don't care.”

Her father's face was turning red, and she knew that she was being obstinate but he was the one who had raised her this way, and he had always seemed proud of it in the past. His favorite story to tell people about her was that the reason she was born two weeks late was because she was too stubborn to do what the doctors said she would.

“I'm not in love with Gaston, Papa,” she continued. “I haven't been for a long time.”

“Belle, you know I've always let you have your own way but I have to put my foot down here.” He pulled out a picture from the stack and threw it at her. “He’s what, ten years older than you? Fifteen? He has a son, he's crippled, and frankly I shouldn't have even let you have him as a teller. He's not good enough for you, and I won't have him back.”

She looked down at the picture in front of her, and was struck with how happy she looked in it. How could that not be good enough for her?

“Fine,” she said simply. “I'll let you know my forwarding address when I have it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, as you've pointed out people are going to talk and I don't think either of us can get a decent job here in town so we'll have to go someplace else.”

“You aren't serious.”

“Aren't I? I think we both know I'm stubborn enough to do it from pure spite even if I didn't love him.”

She hadn't admitted to _herself_ that she loved Ewan yet, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew it was true. She loved him, and that was the difference with Gaston. 

“You'll starve.”

“You and I both know the trust from Mama increases its payout when I get married, and it doubles if I have a child. We'll get by.”

“Belle, you're being ridiculous!”

“I know I am, but if you think for one moment I won't walk out that door and run off to elope with him tomorrow then you're in for a rude awakening in the morning. How much do you think the paper charges for a wedding announcement? I bet I can get it in the same day the announcement that my engagement was broken comes out if I hurry.”

He father was looking at her like he couldn't decide if it was worth the risk that she was serious or not, but she'd never been more serious about anything in her life. Ewan had taken all the risk of their liaisons and she wasn't going to leave him to deal with that fallout on his own. 

“Fine,” her father said at last, not quite meeting her eyes. “He can have his old job back.”

“No, he can't work for Gaston anymore. He needs to be someplace else. What about loans? You've been trying to fill that position for ages.”

“Belle…”

“He can't raise a child forever as a teller, and he'd be good at it. He's a good employee, too. Check his records, aside from days I took him to lunch and didn't bring him back he's been reliable and thorough. Nobody has any problems with him.”

“This is the _last_ time I'm going to help you two,” he said slowly. “You think you're in charge because you threaten, but this is my bank and it’s my money that you live on. I love you, Belle, but this is the last time. Do you hear me?”

“Thank you, Papa,” she said as cheerfully as she could, leaning across the desk to hug him and kiss his cheek. “Ewan will be so excited!”

“I hope he is, and I hope at least he appreciates what I'm doing here.”

Her father didn't usually threaten her like that, but she was too happy with the results to pay it much mind. He would calm down, and she was sure Ewan would do so we'll at this new placement. She'd have to be careful about long lunches from now on, but they could finally go public. People were sure to talk, but if she kept her chin up and her shoulders back they could weather that storm. It was going to all be fine in a few months.


	7. Fairies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Precious things.

It had been a long time since Ewan had a child sleep on top of him, but Henry had fallen asleep watching television while his parents were out on a date and Ewan had no motivation at all to put the boy in his crib. Just having him here was soothing, and he just wanted to spend some more time with his grandson while he had him – who knew when they would see each other again?

He heard Belle coming into the living room from the kitchen, but he couldn’t really do much to greet her without disturbing Henry so he waited until she leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed him quickly on the lips.

“How are my two favorite guys?” she asked quietly.

“Tired,” Ewan replied. “But comfortable.”

Belle smile and stroked Henry’s hair softly before leaning down to kiss Ewan again. He felt a brief pang of longing for what might have been if things had gone differently for them, and he knew she was thinking about it, too. It wasn’t that he regretted anything about his life with Belle, but it was just bittersweet to have a baby in the house after they’d tried so hard before to have one. He tried to push down the thought, but some of it must have shown on his face because the next thing he knew she was sitting on the sofa next to him with her head resting against his shoulder and her hand settled on his arm.

“No regrets,” she said with a little wink.

“No regrets,” he agreed. How could he have any regrets about her? No matter what else he’d done wrong in life, marrying Belle had been unambiguously good.

The three of the sat like that for awhile longer with the television playing uselessly in the background. Ewan felt at peace in that moment, and it was all too soon that the front door opened and he heard the door open and the soft laughter of Emma and Neal as they entered. Belle strained her head upwards a bit to greet the two, but Ewan didn’t dare to move and risk waking the baby.

“Hey guys,” Emma said as she approached the trio on the sofa. “How was he?”

“Perfect,” Ewan replied honestly.

“How was your date?” Belle asked. “I know there’s not much to do in Storybrooke.”

“It was a lot of fun,” Emma said. “To be honest, I really just wanted to go out alone together _without_ worrying about the baby, so dinner and a movie was just fine.” Her eyes went quickly to Henry where he slept on Ewan’s chest. “Although I guess it’s time for him to get tucked in, huh?”

“I’ll take him,” Ewan said instantly, putting his hand on Henry’s back and sitting up so he could shift the baby into his arms.

Emma and Neal exchanged a quick glance before Emma turned back with a smile on her face.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “It’s been a long time but I’m pretty sure I remember how this all goes.”

Neal didn’t argue, which had been what he’d been afraid of, and Ewan left the sound of conversation and laughter behind as he ascended the stairs to the bedrooms. Henry barely stirred as Ewan set the toddler in the crib and tucked a blanket around his chest lightly. It wasn’t particularly cold in the house, but it was old and drafty and he wanted to maintain contact for just that little while longer. He really looked _so_ much like Neal had when he was a boy.

 

Neal didn’t want his dad to get married. He didn’t want to go to Mexico with his dad and Belle. He didn’t want to stay with an old lady Belle knew while they went away. He just wanted for things to be the same as they were before, he wanted to go back to the circus or to their old house with his mother. He barely even remembered his mother anymore, but he remembered being happy there. Here he just felt weird and kind of alone.

When Dad and Belle got home from their honeymoon, Neal wasn’t really sure what to think. He liked Belle fine, but he’d barely even known his father was dating her before they were all living together and then his dad was off on a trip for work right after they got home. And then another, and another. By their first anniversary, Neal was pretty sure he’d spent more of the year with his step-mother than his father. Belle was fine, but things were changing so _fast_.

“How are you doing?” his dad asked one day when they were alone in the car over the weekend. He only really saw his dad on weekends anymore these days which sucked, but Neal didn’t really know what to do about it. They had a lot more money now, anyway, so it was nice to not be nervous about asking for things or whatever. Plus there was more food, and Belle was a pretty good cook.

“I’m fine,” Neal said with a shrug.

“Yeah? I know a lot of things have changed for us this year and I want to make sure you’re okay with it.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Neal replied because he didn’t want to talk about it at all – he barely wanted to think about it. His dad looked at him again but didn’t push it. Not that Neal would have let him push it anyway, because he was too old for that now – he was ten now, almost eleven, and that was way too old for his father’s fairy tales.

“Did I tell you about the prince and princess I met while I was away?” Dad asked instead, and all Neal could do was roll his eyes. “They were hiding from her evil stepmother and his father didn’t approve of them getting married, so I had to help them find a place to live.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now, it’s pretty hard to find a castle in New England,” his father continued. “Much less get financing for one. But we managed it!”

Neal wasn’t looking at his dad anymore. He didn’t want to hear about princes and princesses – or castles, or finance, or any of the things his father talked about. He wanted to know why he was alone all the time now.

“So how have things been at home?” his dad said after a couple seconds. “I know – I _know_ I’ve been gone a lot lately, and that’s got to be hard. I don’t like it, either.”

“It’s okay,” Neal replied, feeling fragile all of a sudden. “School is good.”

“I’m glad. Are you making any friends?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m trying out for baseball this week.”

“That’s good. That’s really good. Let me know how it goes?”

Neal nodded, and the car got silent again. They were almost home when Dad pulled off to the side of the road and turned off the car.

"Dad?" Neal asked, looking at his father curiously. He had no idea why they were here, but his father never did this kind of thing.

"How are you and Belle getting along?" his dad asked him, and Neal wasn't really sure what to say. He liked Belle fine, but he didn't really know what the point of this was.

"She's fine I guess," Neal finally said. "Why? What did she say?"

"Nothing," Dad replied. "She likes you a lot, I just wanted to see how you felt."

"Oh. Well, I don't mind her too much."

"I'm really glad," Dad said, turning the key in the ignition again. "That's really good."

Neal didn't say anything, because it didn't feel like dad was really done with this conversation and he didn't know what he could add to it and they were just pulling into the driveway when his father finally spoke again.

"How would you feel about being a big brother?"

Neal tried not to flinch at the idea. He wasn't sure how he'd feel about it. He had lots of classmates who had brothers and sisters, and he guessed it wasn't really surprising that Belle might want kids of her own or that Dad might want new kids – but it was still kind of a big deal and Neal had no idea how he really felt about it.

"I don't know," Neal said. "I guess that'd be cool."

His dad took a deep breath and smiled a little before putting his hand on Neal's head and ruffling his hair. Neal wasn't sure how he felt, but he knew that was apparently the right answer. Dad left for work again that Monday, and things went back to normal with Belle taking over as Neal's only parent. She made his lunches along with hers and dropped him off at school on her way to work, and it was fine. He did kind of like Belle, and he was pretty sure she was trying really hard to make him like her, he just didn't want to deal with the changes. Change was hard, and Neal was sick of not having a say in his life.

Belle was more cheerful than usual for a while, but he didn’t think much about it. She would whistle and hum when she cooked dinner or whatever, and Neal just tried to stay out of her way even though they were getting along pretty well now. It wasn't bad, really. He was adjusting or whatever. Or at least he was for the first few weeks. Dad would come home on weekends still, and sometimes he'd stay for a few days and he was getting cheerful, too. Neal wasn't sure what was going on yet, but his conversation with his dad from the month before was the last thing on his mind when Belle suddenly wasn't cheerful anymore. She just gave him money for lunch and stayed in her bed a long time, and Neal didn't really know why. She'd been fine on Tuesday, but Wednesday she barely spoke and stayed home from work all that day and the next. He thought maybe she was sick, but she didn't get any medicine and then Dad came home early on Friday and he didn't go to work the next week.

Nobody told Neal what was going on, and he didn't want to ask. Something told him that the answer wouldn't be any good, and Neal didn’t push. She probably just had the flu or something and it’d be fine. Still, it was pretty surprising when Dad was the one who made his lunch on Monday.

“Is Belle feeling any better?” Neal asked when his father handed him the paper bag with a sandwich and an apple in it.

“Not yet, son,” Dad said and he sounded really tired all of a sudden.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Dad looked away and Neal saw his hands gripping the edge of the counter really hard and he wanted to take his question back but then dad was talking anyway.

"Fairies," Dad said. "Do you know about fairies?"

"What do you mean?" Neal asked. "Like, Tinkerbell?"

"Yeah, sort of. Fairies are tricksters, you know? Sometimes they can bring you blessings and all kinds of good things. And sometimes...sometimes they'll take away incredibly precious things that you can’t get back."

"So, fairies are why Belle is sick?"

Dad didn't answer, and Neal was sure he saw tears starting to well up in his father's eyes. Neal didn't want to know anymore. Something bad had happened, and he didn't want his dad to be crying but he didn't want to know what this terrible thing really was. It was too big, and he had a horrible thought that it wasn’t his business, either.

“Go get your coat,” Dad said at last. “I’ll drive you to school.”

“Okay,” Neal replied softly. He turned and as he left the kitchen he was sure he heard his father sob.


	8. Little Miracles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something good happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to istarelisheba who made a literal deal with a figurative devil to get this to happen.

Belle was sure she was being ridiculous going to the doctor. It had only been a little nausea over the last couple days, and some muscle aches. It was probably just a stomach bug, but with the baby staying with them she wanted to be sure it wasn’t too serious. Plus there was the party for Ewan’s retirement that weekend and she just didn’t have time to be sick.

Doctor Whale had been her doctor since he had taken over her last doctor’s practice around the time Neal went to college, so she knew most of the nursing staff by name and they all knew her and had been able to fit her in without much difficulty a couple days after she first started noticing symptoms. She’d already had all her vitals taken, and the nurse was going over what had brought her in.

“What medications do you take?” the nurse asked, pen at the ready to mark them down.

“Ibuprofen if I have a headache, but otherwise nothing.”

The nurse nodded and made some notes before she spoke again.

“And what brings you in today?”

“I think I might be coming down with something,” Belle replied. “I’ve been really worn out and tired lately, I’m taking naps all the time and sometimes I feel faint. I’ve also been nauseous and bloated.”

“Any fever?” the nurse asked as she wrote and Belle shook her head. “When was your last menstrual period?”

“Oh, goodness, probably two months? I’ve been a little irregular lately.”

She was getting to an age when she was pretty sure menopause was imminent, so irregular periods weren’t unexpected or uncommon. It was a fact of life, she was getting older and things were changing.

“Okay, well the doctor will be in soon,” the nurse said as she stood up. “And I’ll let him know what you’ve said.”

Belle was always a little nervous sitting in the doctor’s office alone, even though she had no reason to be. It was just a routine doctor’s appointment, and she would probably end up just needing some kind of vitamin supplement or something and this would all be totally fine. Or it was some weird rare tumor and she was going to die. One or the other.

“Good morning,” Doctor Whale said as he came in, distracting her from wondering about it. She’d find out what was going on soon enough. “What seems to be the problem today?” he asked as he sat on the chair the nurse had just vacated and started looking through her chart.

“I’ve just been a little under the weather lately,” she said before recounting the symptoms she’d already told the nurse.

“And what are you using for birth control?” he asked, flipping through the pages like he was looking for something.

“I was on the pill for awhile, but I went off of it a few months ago.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Well, I didn’t see a point in it anymore. They told me I was infertile in my late 20s, so it was mostly for period control and I think menopause is starting soon.”

“But you were pregnant before, weren’t you?”

She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the question and not the reality of the situation it referred to. They had tried a long, long time to get pregnant in the early days of their marriage and she’d been through every intervention they could afford at the time trying to make it happen and it just never stuck. She still mourned the babies she hadn’t had, and thinking about them still hurt.

“Yeah,” she finally said with a nod. “Twice. But I miscarried both times in the first trimester and we tried for a few years and weren’t able to conceive again after the second one.”

“And you are sexually active?”

“I am.”

“Okay, I’d like to give you a pregnancy test just to rule it out since it’s the most likely thing given your symptoms, and I’ll go ahead and order a blood test to confirm those results and to check your vitamin levels and everything.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How could I be pregnant at this point?”

“It’s not uncommon for women to go through a burst of fertility as they get closer to menopause,” he said. “Your ovaries start firing off whatever eggs they still have left and sometimes going off of the pill can make women more fertile for a cycle or two as well.”

“But...we tried for _so_ long back then.”

“There’s no easy way to say this, but a lot of times the pressure of trying to conceive can have a negative effect on fertility. I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself thinking about this, let’s just do a test and then work out the details, okay?”

She nodded and watched silently as he left. It felt like seconds until the nurse was back with a little plastic cup for Belle to go pee into. She tried to focus to what she was being told as she was escorted to the restroom, but she couldn’t listen to anything because her head was buzzing from the idea that she might be pregnant again and the vague terror of another miscarriage.

After she handed over the cup of urine to the nurse another one sat her down for a blood test. She still couldn’t focus, but if anything that helped with the stranger drawing a phial of blood from her arm because who could be worried about that when she was in her forties and there could be another person inside of her? What was Ewan going to say? He had a grandson now and they hadn’t even thought about having another baby for ten years or so. And then there was the looming prospect of another miscarriage. It had broken both of their hearts each time it happened, and she didn’t think she could go through that again.

The second nurse was finishing up the blood draw when the first one walked in and Belle was sure she was about to hear it had come back negative and the blood test would just end up being for vitamin B or something.

“It looks like some congratulations are in order,” the nurse said. “You’re pregnant!”

 

When Belle came home, she immediately went to lay down. Ewan had hoped she’d feel a little better after her doctor’s appointment, but cures always took time and she’d been gone longer than he’d expected. Neal and Emma had been planning to take Henry for a little walk to see some of Neal’s old haunts, and he helped them get ready while she rested. Once they were out the door, though, he went to check on her. She wasn’t sleeping, just laying on her back with her feet up on a stack of pillows and staring at the ceiling.

“How’d the doctor go?” he asked as he sat next to her. Something was definitely not good, and he didn’t even want to guess what it could be.

“I’m pregnant,” she said softly, resting her palm on her stomach. It felt like the world had stopped spinning in that moment and he was catapulted back in time to a much younger self who had been ecstatic to hear those words. Now he was just confused and terrified, although there was a hint of hope in there that he couldn’t quite suppress. They’d been through all of this before and now was certainly not an ideal time for it, but he couldn’t stop himself from the hope that maybe _this_ time might be better.

“Are you alright?” he asked at last. This had always been so much harder on her than on him, and here they were all over again.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m ten weeks, and if I can get to twelve it’ll be the second trimester and the furthest I’ve ever managed. Sixteen weeks is the magic number when it’s probably safe, though.”

A month and a half. They had a month and a half to wait to see if the baby would be okay and she’d already done two and a half months without knowing.

“What do you want to do?” he asked her at last, trying not to get his hopes too high. This was all ultimately up to her if it was worth it or not.

“The doctor gave me a list,” she said, shifting a little bit to face him. “I have a special diet I’m supposed to stay on and he wants me on bedrest and as little stress as possible. They’re also doing a blood test to make sure all my hormones are where they should be. Plus there are some supplements I picked up on the way home.”

“Does he think he knows what happened before?” He couldn’t quite get out the word _miscarriage_ at the moment, like it would be a jinx to even say it this early.

“I don’t know. He did an ultrasound to make sure my uterus and everything looked okay, but the old doctor did that after the last one and it was all fine. I won’t know if it was hormonal until the blood test comes back, and if it’s not that then it’s genetic and there’s nothing else to do then.”

So it was basically the same as last time except she was older now – they both were – and he couldn’t delude himself into thinking it would be better this time.

Ewan laid down next to her and reached out to hold her hand. It was terrifying, and there was no way to fix it. It was a sword of damocles hanging over both of them. He wanted to tell her that it would all be alright, but of course he had no way of knowing that. He wanted to fast forward the next few weeks until they were through this but that was impossible. There was nothing that could be done except being here with her hand in his as they both accepted this new reality they found themselves in.

He tugged her hand a little to draw her closer and she scooted over so that she could rest her head on his shoulder while staying on her back. He was pretty sure she was trying to stay on her back to help the embryo stay implanted and it broke his heart just a little bit. He’d known she wanted a baby, but he hadn’t known how badly it had hurt her that they’d never managed to have one. She’d never let him into this part of her inner life and he wished she had. They could have done more, pushed harder to adopt or he could have found a job that would have him home more to take some of the stress off of her. Maybe they wouldn’t have given up so easily if he’d known.

He wanted to apologize to her, but he didn’t know that she’d want him to, and she was feeling emotional enough right now without bringing up the past. Instead, he put his arm around her shoulders and let her rest against him. There weren’t ever going to be words for what they’d gone through or for what he hoped could possibly be coming true now, but he knew whatever happened he didn’t regret any of it. Even knowing all that he knew now, he’d have married Belle all over again.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I love you.”

He could feel her relax into him and crane her head towards his, and she had a big smile on her face when he looked down.

“I love you too,” she replied, and there was a beat before she spoke again. “You’re not upset, are you?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I was just thinking how happy I am to have married you.”

“Yeah?”

“It was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.”

“Damn right it was,” she replied teasingly and snuggling further into his side. “Are we going to be okay?” She was suddenly serious again, and it hurt him to hear it. He needed her to feel safe again.

“Of course we are, sweetheart,” he said. “No matter what happens, we’re always going to be okay.”

He felt her nod, and then she settled again with her hand on her stomach. He was terrified, but she was, too, and they would handle this together no matter what.


End file.
